1. Field of the Description
The present invention relates, in general, to walk-around, costumed characters and control over audio output (e.g., a character may sing or talk) on or by such walk-around characters, and, more particularly, to methods and systems for allowing a performer or operator wearing a walk-around character costume to selectively navigate a dialog tree or scripted audio playback and, in some cases, for allowing the pre-recorded audio provided by the dialog tree to be customized to suit a particular context (e.g., to provide context modulation) such as to suit individual characteristics of one or more people nearby the walk-around, costumed character (e.g., to provide audio suited to a young person or to a person having a birthday or celebrating another occasion).
2. Relevant Background
Walk-around or costumed characters are used to entertain and interact with visitors of many facilities including theme or amusement parks. A walk-around character may be provided by an operator or performer wearing a costume including a head that covers the performer's face. The costume head is mounted to or supported on a headband that is worn by the performer. In the head and/or costume, equipment including sound equipment (e.g., a speaker for playing pre-recorded audio) and robotics is provided so that a walk-around character can speak with visitors by playing back pre-recorded, scripted lines of conversation to provide a meetable character that can be animated to move their eyes and mouth while they talk and interact with the visitors.
In many applications, the walk-around character is representing a character from a movie, a video game, a cartoon, or the like. The visitors expect that character to have a particular or a single voice, e.g., the voice used in the movie. As a result, the performer cannot simply use their own voice when they meet and talk with visitors, and, instead, scripted lines typically are recorded for each of the walk-around characters to provide the expected voices. The onboard audio or sound equipment is then controlled or triggered to playback these lines at appropriate times. The character's head may simultaneously be animated by operating robotics to provide mouth movement and eye blinks that are synchronized to the audio playback.
To allow each walk-around character to speak to visitors, there has to be an effective way to trigger the audio that cannot be detected by the often nearby visitor. For example, the triggering mechanism should not be audible to the visitor. One implementation is to use a backstage operator who has control over the audio and animation by selectively sending wireless control signals to the costume's sound system. However, it is not practical in many cases to provide a backstage operator for each walk-around character. In other implementations, control is provided to the performer within the costume using finger paddles that the performer can operate to lip sync the character mouth to the pre-recorded audio track presently being played back to the visitor. Use of finger paddles, though, is typically visible to the visitors, which can min the illusion or desired effect.
There remains a need for effective ways to trigger control over walk-around character equipment such as to trigger an audio playback and to trigger animation of the character's mouth (or to trigger other character-based operation or special effects). Preferably, such new ways would not be audible and would not be detectable by an observer of the character. Further, it may be desirable that the trigger be easy for the performer to initiate or operate while also providing relatively few false triggers as interaction with a walk-around character can be ineffective if the character speaks at improper moments or an incorrect scripted line is triggered.